Hi, I’m Joe V. The V is for Vadeboncoeur, but no one ever really calls me that (except my business card). That card also calls me the Global Director of Product Development, Marketing and Creative Design for Trek Bicycle. Yep, I am sometimes not really sure what all that means either. I do know that I dig bikes, oatmeal, motorcycles, burritos, the weird things I see along the way, my family and my job. I get to travel the world helping make great bikes, so it’s a pretty great gig.

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June 17, 2008

Career Advice

I hate to give advice. You really put yourself out there when you do. If it turns out the way you put it down, great, good, grand. It will undoubtedly be forgotten as fast as it was given. The reverse side of advice is much worse. Should you give advice that doesn’t turn out, you may never forget it. The person who was wronged by your words can take their lumps two ways; they can blame themselves for being foolish enough to follow somebody who wasn’t personally invested or they can just blame you. They will undoubtedly choose the latter. That is, unless they ask you what you would do. Then you can advise them to forgive you and move on.

That being said, I think I’ve got something really solid here. Something along the lines of “don’t spit into the wind” or “make sure to pay all of your taxes”. Something that can’t fail. Here it is: If you choose to make your living with the aesthetics of your body, DO NOT get a tattoo. Case in point, we had a photoshoot scheduled for the Cruiser section in our 2009 catalog and had the model picked out, photographer and staff on location, and permits in hand . Picking out a model to ride a bike in a two-piece, while being a favorable thing to be tasked with, is harder than you might think. So when the model you’ve booked calls the morning of the shoot and asks if the big tattoo on her side is “going to be an issue” it tends to make a producer a tad irksome. Remember, this is the “big tattoo” that was not featured on her cards, any of her shots, and her agent failed to remember. So, I did what any guy in my position would do; I asked her to send a picture of the tat to my Blackberry. I felt “big tattoo” was open to interpretation. A small Tweety Bird I could deal with (Hey, I’ve been on spring break before and Photoshop can do some impressive things) but dragons and skulls just wouldn’t fly. What showed up was an ink rose that wrapped up her entire left side. To be completely candid, I thought it was pretty cool but probably not the image we were going for on that particular category. Long story short, we called in a back up and hit the shots with a different gal in place. A good save but certainly not optimal.

I should probably have prefaced that little story with the fact that the author has a tat (bear paw, left shoulder) and is in no way biased against people who choose to adorn their bodies in such a manner. However, I was just never blessed with the aesthetics that somebody would pay good money to capture on film. Though if I had, I think I would’ve skipped the ink.